Adding True Bypass to a russian Big Muff

The russian made Big Muffs are very common and often found. They are
much cheaper than the US made model but suffer from cheaper parts and
are not true bypass. The black russian Muff (picture 1) is the one, actually
produced, the green one (piczre 2) was its forerunner. The tan colored
russian made Muff (picture 3) is very rare but can still be found and the
"Mike Matthews Red Army Overdrive" (picture 4) is a very rare bird.
Internally there is not much difference between them and the best mod
for them is to make them true bypass, because they are sucking tone in
bypass-mode ! Thanks god this is not a difficult thing to do and its the
same procedure for all four models. Soundwise there is a lot of discussion
about the differences of the models and first and foremost the differences
in tone compared to the US model and the vintage Muffs. I own every
existing Muff model, so I think this is a good base to compare them and
for me the russian boxes are sounding great ! They dont sound like the
vintage ones and they dont sound like the US model, but thats allright if you want an other sound, buy one of the other Muffs. The green russian
Muff is the fuzziest one of them all, a very cool pedal. The black one is
more of a heavy overdrive/distortion, very creamy and sustaining but not
fuzzy. If you are looking for that certain "Korn" or "Smashing Pumpkins"
(Siamese Dreams) sound, you should simply try them.
If you open one of this boxes and have a look inside you will see what I
mean, you will find a lot of flimsy and cheap parts, cheap cables and really
wild assembling methods. Getting trouble is only a matter of time and
according to Murphys law the trouble will start when ..... ;-)
From my experiences with dozens of this boxes here is a good advice: if
you decide to keep one of this Muffs to use it regularly on stage,
spend some time and money to upgrade it with some good quality
parts.
From my point of view its worth the time and money and you will receive
a really good sounding box.

Here is what to do:

1. Change the switch for a 3PDT and make the thing true bypass. For the
green russian Muff you will need a metal washer to install the new switch.
For the "how to" please read one. During this procedure you can also
change the LED to any type, diameter and color you want to (with or
without bezel) because you already have to resolder it while truebypassing the unit.
2. Change all the pots with good quality ones (Mouser, CTS ...) and stick
on the knobs you like.
3. Replace the super-crappy jacks with heavy duty ones (I prefer
Switchcraft all the way). Now you can also reverse the positions of the
jacks to make it more compatible to other boxes (input=right jack /
output = left jack). You also need to fasten the complete PCB in a
different way now, because the factory installed jacks are holding it in
place. Dont do the same shit again, use cable connections and plastic
stands for the PCB. There is room enough inside the boxes, so there is
absolutely no need to go for the stock method.
4. Drill an additional hole and install an A/C jack - normally the russian
Muffs dont have one. All the russian Muffs are negative grounded !
5. Replace all the wires with good quality ones - the stock ones are of
very poor quality and will break ! This requires some soldering work (and
time) and experiences how to solder on PCBs
If you want to go further and mod your unit, you should desolder all the
transistors, replace them with sockets and stuck them back but take care
for the correct pinout ! So you can try different trannies to compare them
(gain, noise ...) directly. Another good mod is to replace all the supercheap resistors with metal-film resistors (1% tolerance) and all the caps
with high-quality film caps. This will enhance the sound drastically, even
when you stay with the stock values. From there on you can do any wild
mod you want, there are dozens of webpages out there for this subject you can do more/less gain mods, the socalled "Sustain Punch - Creamy
Dreamer" mod, EQ modifications ........ feel free to experiment.

If you dont like the big cases, you can also rehouse the complete guts
into a smaller box, the Hammond cases are are really fine. Here you can
see how it can look after this operation (photos from Davy Boggs from the
LOOOPER company - www.loooper.com)

But now lets go and make the thing true bypass. The first way described
here is a good way if you dont want to change the factory installed DPDT
switch (6 lugs) for a 3PDT switch (9 lugs). You can also make the thing
true bypass but without LED indication ! Its very simple, just follow this
schematic and youre done:
First of all cut all the traces to the jacks and dont forget to make a note
to where they lead. Afterwards add wires to the new traces:
1. effect input and out
2. jack i/p and o/p
solder the other end of the wires to the dpdt
eff ip ------[ ]------ eff op
jack ip ------[ ]------ jack op
[----] <---- solder these two lugs together
Make sure that the jacks are grounded to the circuit too

If you want to change the switch you will receive true bypass with LED
indication, the trick is to cut a trace on the PCB and rewire the new 3PDT
switch like this:

For further information you will find the circuit drawings of the black and
the green russian Big Muff here, have fun !

Black russian Big Muff

Green russian Big Muff